


All in a Day's Work

by tiniestdormouse



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Family, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Platonic Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-31
Updated: 2015-12-31
Packaged: 2018-05-10 14:36:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5589949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiniestdormouse/pseuds/tiniestdormouse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stan Pines really didn't want to pay for a new maintenance guy, so it was rather convenient this chubby kid showed up on his front porch to return his screwdriver. But after a month or so into Soos's "internship", Stan begins to think he just might be worth keeping around.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All in a Day's Work

**Author's Note:**

> Fanfic request from tumblr!

During the third consecutive week that Fix-It Kid showed up at the Mystery Shack, Stan seriously considered a couple things.

First, he hoped the boy didn’t expect to get paid anytime soon. Not that Stan was for free child labor anymore than the next small business owner, but he had to keep the Shack’s tight budget in mind, you know?  
  
Second, he wondered if his grandma would start complaining about how much time the kid spent around the Shack. She showed up on his porch the evening after he returned Stan’s screwdriver, demanding to get a “good sense of this cuckoo gringo.”  
  
Stan swore up and down that he didn’t make her grandson do anything wrong (unless cleaning the gutters was against her personal beliefs). The boy had piped up, “Abuelita, Mr. Pines’s offered me an internship as his new fix-it man,” to which the old woman stood up straighter and pressed a brightly-manicured finger against his chest.  
  
“I have my eye on you, Señor Pines,” she started, “if anything happens to my precious nieto–”  
  
Pulling out Stan’s golden rule of customer service (“Let the customer _think_ they’re always right”), he raised his hand in acquiesce. “Okay, okay, I got it.”  
  
Now, seeing the chubby boy at his front porch, Stan was at a loss. After almost a month into Fix-It’s “internship,” he realizes there was only so much work left for the twelve-year old to do. The kid was useful: after he cleaned out the Shack’s gutters, he managed to repair some loose titles on the roof, cold-proof the remainder of the Shack’s windows, cleaned out the attic, and figured out how to get the living room’s VCR to stop blinking 12:00 all the time. Everything that seemed broken before had been fixed (more or less); and he was pretty clever with a roll of duct tape.  
  
But no way would Stan put him in the front-end of the business giving tours (that was firmly Mr. Mystery territory). Stan considered ending this “internship” before the boy asked about compensation.  Somehow, however, he felt reluctant to let a good resource go so soon.  
     
“Eh… you…Sonny, was it?”  
  
“It’s Soos, Mr. Pines.” But there was a little bounce on the boy’s voice, as if he didn’t really mind Stan’s mistake.  
  
“Yeah, yeah, Soos, that’s what I meant.” He scratched the back of his head, glancing around. Around the corner, the pair of turned over bins caught his eye. It wasn’t the first morning this had happened. There were also strange barking noises that came from beneath the porch. While standing watch the night before, (no one steals from Stanley Pines, not even his garbage), Stan caught little figures scamper underneath the house. Rummaging underneath there sounded like a good peon duty.  
  
“Oh yeah,” he snapped his fingers. “Something’s been getting into the trash lately. Eh, I need to get stuff moved from underneath the porch too – been forever since I checked out what’s under there. D'ya think ya could-”  
  
“Sure thing!” Soos pulled out a pair of safety goggles (no idea where he got them, but Stan figured they’d be proof he was being a responsible adult) and snapped them on. Stan fished out a rake, a flashlight, and some gardening gloves as additional protection. The two scouted along the perimeter of Shack, checking for anyplace where a woodland critter could’ve dug beneath. Near the back wall, Soos spotted pile of disturbed earth.  
  
“Dude, there it is,” he crouched down and pulled against the tin wooden slats and saw how quickly they came off in his hands. He stuck he head through. “Whooooa, it’s like a whole ‘nother world!” His high voice echoed.  
  
“Good job, kid.” Stan peered through the darkness, pushing away a sense of unease. “Now ya jus’ gotta scare ‘em off. And don’t get bitten or anything,” he added. “Rabies shots don’t come cheap.”  
  
“Gotcha!” The boy soon disappeared, kicking up dirt behind him. Stan leaned against the sideboard, crossing his arms and checking his watch. The first tour bus was going to come in half an hour. He glanced down into the hole again and saw the bottom soles of the kid’s red hightops retreat into the gloom.  
  
“Don’t take too long. This gotta be quick before tourists start comin’!”  
  
“Mr. Pines, you hafta see all this stuff! It's like from the movies or something!”  
     
Oh no. Stan didn’t think that his twin brother had scraped any weird gizmos there before he… he left… all those years ago. Stan thought he moved all of that nerd stuff to the Shack basement. That sense of unease increased. Who knows what weird contraptions Soos could be messing around with?  
  
“It’s just some old junk! Don’t touch any of it,” he warned.  
  
 “Wait, there’s something under here,” came Soos’s voice, now fainter. “Think I see the raccoon…”  
  
Suddenly, a loud clamor was heard.  
  
“Hey, kid?”  
  
Turning his ear, he waited for the boy’s response.  
  
“Soos?”  
  
He crouched down by the hole. A few minutes of silence passed. A knot started to form in the pit of his stomach. His Abuelita was going to murder him….  
  
“You good?”  
  
Stan cleared his throat, loudly, then bellowed out, “Hold on, I’m comin’ down there!” He lowered onto his belly – crap, he’d have to change into a fresh suit before the bus came – and tried wedging himself through the hole. Bits of wood scraped against his back and he inhaled a mess of cobwebs. Stan swore softly, coughed into his fist and squinted his eyes. He hated tight spaces; it provoked memories of being locked in the trunk of a car after a botched job years ago. Maybe he should go back for a flashlight first–  
  
Immediately, a shadow darted before him.  
  
“Huh-”  
  
“EeEEEeEEe-!”  
  
A ball of fur smelling like a cross between food rot and wet dog slammed into his face. He screamed. The raccoon scrambled over his face and leaped over his head, knocking down his fez. Still screeching, the animal bounded down his back and off into the woods.  
  
“What the he—hot Belgian waffles!” he amended at the last minute. “Flippin’ beast-!”  
  
The space beneath the porch barely gave him enough room to crawl along his hands and knees, but Stan manged to squeeze beneath the support beams.  
  
“You down there?” He moved forward, getting more grit between his fingers. Rocks and overgrown, dead vegetation brushed against his body. In the dimness, he caught the forms of old machinery, discarded tools, the glint of broken test tubes and beakers. Shuffling carefully to avoid any sharp refuse, Stan called, “Soos?”  
  
His hand crunched against something. Looking down, he saw the clean skull of some sort of creature and instantly recoiled. Damn Shack and its damn creepy nerd things.  
  
His heart skipped a beat when he finally saw the flicking light ahead.  
  
“Mr. Pines!” The boy was wedged in a tighter space than he himself was in, right before a boarded grate. Stan recognized the glowing green haze beyond as the ghost lights from the basement. Definitely not a place for Soos to discover.  
  
“Whatcha doin’ all the way back here?” he grumbled. “I told ya to be quick.” His tone softened however, upon seeing the boy’s scratched-up face.  
  
“I’m stuck,” Soos said in a small voice. “Chased the raccoon, but I think my leg’s caught.”  
  
“Oh, for god’s…” He sighed and shuffled around, grabbing Soos’s flickering flashlight in one hand. Sure enough, the boy’s left leg was caught between two beams, which had fallen over from disrepair. Stan pushed the kid’s foot, and dirt and pebbles rained down upon them both. A spark of panic flared up in Stan’s chest, but he beat it down.  
  
“The fu-the flippin heck,” he muttered. “Looks like yer leg knocked over some o’ the supports. We might be sittin’ under a weak spot in the floor.” The idea of the floor caving in did not improve his mood. “Okay, here’s the deal–”  
  
He heard a sniffle.  
  
“Kid?”  
  
His voice came even smaller. “I’m sorry for messing up, Mr. Pines,” Soos said. Another sniffle.  
  
“No… what are ya talkin’ about? This thing? Nah, it’s my fault for sending ya down without knowing what a wreck this place is.”  
  
“And now we’ll be trapped here forever,” the boy went on.  
  
“Ya kiddin’ me? We’ll get out o’ here in a jiffy. Lemme try somethin’. Ya still have that rake?” The boy nodded and gestured to his side where the gardening implement laid. Stan grabbed it and stuck the wooden handle beneath the boy’s foot and one of the fallen beams. “I’m gonna lever this up,” he explained. “As soon as ya get loose, get the heck out o’ here, got it?”  
  
The boy nodded.  
  
“On the count of three.” Stan tested the makeshift lever with a light push. More dirt and rocks. Sweet Moses, he couldn’t breathe-  
  
“Okay, gonna start,” he said in a tight voice. “One.”  
  
His hands trembled slightly, palms growing damp. The flashlight flickered, its light growing weaker.  
  
“Two.”  
  
Dammit, if he was going to let a little cramped space freak him out…  
  
“Three!”  
  
Stan shoved down as hard as his could. The beam jerked up. Soos scrambled away, leg free. The ceiling trembled.  
  
“Run!”  
  
Stan got to his knees, dropped the rake, and pressed his hands up against the broken beam. Splinters dug into his hands as he supported the weakened spot above their heads.  
  
The boy dashed the way they came, leaving behind the flashlight. Stan breathed shallowly through his nose, trying not to think of suffocating to death or being burying alive in this claptrap.  
  
A minute later, he heard the echo of Soos’ voice, “I’m out!”  
  
“Great!” He replied, trying not to strain himself. “I’m right behind ya!”  
  
Tentatively, he lowered one arm to his side. A low groan came from above him. Immediately, he grabbed the rake and propped it in his place, then tucked another fallen piece of wood and stuck that upwards as well. Another low tremor but Stan didn’t stick around to witness its failure. He scrambled, hands and knees across the dirt floor. His jacket caught on a piece of metal, but he yanked it off with a loud rip.  
  
Panting, he pulled himself out into the open air. Small hands grabbed the back of his jacket as Soos pulled him out the rest of the way.  
  
Where he emerged, a heavy series of thuds was heard beneath the Shack. Stan braced his hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath. He wiped the dirt from his brow and glanced over at the boy.  
  
“You okay?”  
  
“Yeah.” Soos grinned.  
  
Stan attempted to brush off the dirt from his suit to no avail. He checked his watch. The first bus was in five minutes.  
  
“Any broken bones?”  
  
“Nope.” A bit of blood dripped own on Soos’s shirt from where he had scraped his cheek. “Thanks for rescuing me, Mr. Pines.”  
  
“No sweat. Can’t let my best employee go that easy.”  
  
“Employee?” Soos’s eyes lit up. “So I’m not just an intern anymore?”  
  
“Congrats on your promotion.” Sure, Soos needed a bit more training, but Stan couldn’t imagine looking for another replacement at this point. The boy showed promise.  
  
He surveying both of them with a half-grimace. “Bus’s supposed to be here in five, but I’m sure we can make them wait another fifteen.” Slapping a hand against Soos’s back, the two of them marched to the back door of the Shack, which led directly to the kitchen. “Now, c'mon, let’s get that dirt off ya, before your Abuelita throws a fit.”


End file.
